Keith Stevens screened the first Wonthaggi International Film Festival in 2010.
By Larry Hills
IT’S history in the making! Next weekend's Wonthaggi International Film Festival (WIFF) enters its 10th year with an outstanding array of international films.
WIFF was the brainchild of the Keith Stevens, the past manager of the Wonthaggi Cinema. Keith was a projectionist and a cinematographer and had some amazing connections in the film industry from all over the world. He was able to bring in some fantastic films, some even before their Australian release.
Keith inaugurated the first WIFF ten years ago in February, 2010. The WIFF sparked an interest in fine films amongst the local community and the Bass Coast Fine Film Group was formed in order to get an audience for regular screenings of fine films in Wonthaggi. There were forty-six members in the first year and that’s grown to 280 in 2019!
IT’S history in the making! Next weekend's Wonthaggi International Film Festival (WIFF) enters its 10th year with an outstanding array of international films.
WIFF was the brainchild of the Keith Stevens, the past manager of the Wonthaggi Cinema. Keith was a projectionist and a cinematographer and had some amazing connections in the film industry from all over the world. He was able to bring in some fantastic films, some even before their Australian release.
Keith inaugurated the first WIFF ten years ago in February, 2010. The WIFF sparked an interest in fine films amongst the local community and the Bass Coast Fine Film Group was formed in order to get an audience for regular screenings of fine films in Wonthaggi. There were forty-six members in the first year and that’s grown to 280 in 2019!
Ten years on and we are about to embark on another world journey through film. Keith Stevens has left a legacy which has inspired many people to maintain the quality of the films at WIFF. The Wonthaggi Union and Community Arts Centre staff have worked in partnership with the Bass Coast Fine Film Group to choose and source the films for this year’s festival. Special mention goes to Jacqui Francis, who is the box office, arts and culture officer at the WUCAC for her work in locating and acquiring the films for the 2020 WIFF.
 The Festival opens on Friday evening, 28 February at 7pm with a French film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, winner of a coveted Cannes prize and one of the best reviewed films of the year.  Saturday, 10.30am, a Colombian film, Birds of Passage, is a visually stunning and often surprising true story that charts the rise of the Colombian drug business in the 1970s among an indigenous clan.  Saturday 1.30pm, a Macedonian film, God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya, a satire about a Macedonian woman who spies the annual riverside Epiphany ritual in which men dive into the water to retrieve a wooden cross tossed in by the local priest. On impulse she jumps in and finds the cross.  Saturday 4pm, from Norway, Out Stealing Horses, was winner of the Silver Bear for Cinematography at the Berlin International Film Festival. This adaptation of the international bestseller is a powerful evocation of the inner lives of men tormented by their past.  Saturday 7pm, the South Korean film which has won many international film awards including “Best Film” at this year’s Oscars, Parasite, a pitch-black tragicomedy about social inequality in modern Korea.  Sunday 10.30am, a film from Israel, God of the Piano. When she’s told that her newborn son is deaf, concert pianist, Anat resorts to desperate measures to ensure that her child can hold his own within her competitive, musically accomplished family.  Sunday 1pm, a film from Iceland, A White,White Day, is a drama about an off-duty police chief (Invar Sigurdsson, who received the Cannes’ Critics’ Week award for Best Actor for his performance) who suspects a local man of having had an affair with his late wife, who died in a tragic accident two years earlier.  Sunday 3.30pm, A Guide to Second Date Sex. It’s a comedy from the UK. According to FilmInk, “those who have taste for rom-coms, or just those who like relating to people in films, for better or worse, should definitely check this one out.” |
So that’s it! WIFF 2020. Eight different films from eight different countries. A great selection. Thanks to Jacqui and the WUCAC staff who provided the films in partnership with the Bass Coast Fine Film Group who help provide the audiences.
Tickets for all the films are on sale at the kiosk during the festival. Admission is $15 for adults and $10 concession.
For more information about this year’s WIFF films, including trailers, go to the Bass Coast Fine Film Group website.
Tickets for all the films are on sale at the kiosk during the festival. Admission is $15 for adults and $10 concession.
For more information about this year’s WIFF films, including trailers, go to the Bass Coast Fine Film Group website.